Ground hogs, dogs, and hogs

We had a very active morning already.... Zander and Kai found a ground hog hole in the field where I'm about to move the pigz. They thought it was amazing.

Hey, is that one dog or two?

The pigz wondered what the fuss was all about. 

Zander wants that ground hog.... and the pigz for that matter. Someone was asking if he is still bigger than the pigz. He's taller but the pigz probably weigh about the same.  Isn't he so smiley?

Kai just loves digging. Don't you love her curly tail? Ha! We call her Wiggles. And Digger.

The wind changed and our heat and humidity blew off.... we are having a stunning day. I think I'm on 2nd breakfast... or 1st lunch... but either way I need to hurry up and get back out there.

Happy Thursday everyone! Are your dogs on the hunt? Are your hogs wondering who their new neighbor is?

It's Finally Summer!

Yesterday was THE day... the first "real" summer day... it was achingly hot... totally swampy...and completely glorious!  I'll complain about the heat for the rest of the summer but yesterday was the perfect summer day. 

Visitor to the bee balm.

First, guess what I saw yesterday morning? Check it out!

Does anyone know the variety? I think maybe a green headed hummingbird?

The hummingbirds love our property. We have a lot of blooms for the beez - which also brings in the hummingbirds. They are always around the hosta and they also really love the bee balm.

Then... oh then.... it was the Best Day Ever! My first tomato!  Look at this lovely!

I've been waiting all season for this.

This is either one of the black krims or a Cherokee Purple but it was fabulous and I ran right in the house and ate most of it with olive oil and sea salt.

Seriously the salad bucket is my new favorite thing.

I put the rest in with my treasures from my salad bucket.

Today is going to be another hotsy-totsy... but the humidity is already way down thanks to the storms we had last nite. Thankfully it was not a tornadic storm or too dangerous... so it was nice to fall asleep to the rain and thunder and not have to worry about running into the basement for cover.

Happy Wednesday everyone! Do you have tomatoes yet? Have you seen a hummingbird?

Moving Pigs to the Deep Grass

We moved the pigz again.... this time to the deep grass. They loved it.

Pigz in the deep grass.

Remember that we moved the pigz to that new small lot just last Friday? This is what it looks like now... can you believe it?

Moonscape that used to be lush green. I needed them to till it.

I'm always amazed that folks don't understand that pigz can be so destructive. But maybe "effective" is a good word because I did want them to 'roto-hog' this area ... they were kind of digging to China.  But this is what happens if your pigz get out which is why you need really good fence.

Ham digging it's way to China.

So we moved them on Sunday. My big idea is to get them moved to the deep woods in the next couple days - we are heading toward some 90*-100* days and we need them in the darkest shade to keep them cool. To get them to the woods we are implementing a kind of step-by-step rotational grazing scheme. Why don't we just walk them over there? Sure. Yeah. Ha! Actually pigz can be kind of hard to herd and that is why. *OFG thinks about how we tried this once and all the neighbor kids ended up hot, muddy, and stinky.*

Here are the pigz going hog wild in the new yard. I'm trying to get them to dig up this stump. 

I also want them to till up these lots on the way to the woods. I'll use this area for growing fodder for them. In the fall we can turn them out into a field of beans and turnips so they can get nice and fat. The next step will be into a bigger yard which will connect them to the lot in the woods. But between here and there we have very little shade. It's going to take some fancy fencing to get this done.

We used the same methods as Friday to put up the fence. We moved the already-set-up electric line, pounded in some tposts on the outside, then strung up some field fence. And yes we used some fence that we had to drag out of the weeds but it worked like a charm.

New fenceline - complete with weeds from where we drug this fence out of the underbrush.

Then we lured the pigz into the new area with hard cooked eggs and they went hog wild.

Commander Zander. The FoeHammer. Wants pigz.

Of course, then I got the dogs. Zander hates the pigz and he really likes to give them the business. Kai has her eye on them also. They love to watch the pigz run away in abject terror.

The best thing is that we can see the pigz from the house. Not that I like to look at them but at least we can see what is going on.

Happy Monday everyone! Nothing to see here but a ham grazing in the deep grass!

Moving the pigz

I moved the pigz the other day - it was kind of an emergency "Oh no!" kind of thing. They had started to dig a big hole right under the gate!

 Hog happy in salad.

They had basically eaten everything in their current yard and we need to do a progressive yard by yard move down to the deep woods anyway. So the other day was the perfect time to go and find me fencing tools and get at it. 

Mostly I just needed to string up some field fence along the current hotwire we'd set up for the goats. The goats hadn't been interested at all at grazing down the hill....until I was working down there then they were all "But this is MY yard!" and the crying started. Too bad goats the pigz are moving in!

The hardest part about this fencing project was getting all the materials. You'll remember that I received the most romantic gift ever ...so I had plenty of field fence. But I didn't need that long of a section and I remembered there was some behind the Turkey House. Unfortunately it was in the weeds.... and I had to drag it out thru the brambles and down the hill. This really was the hardest part.

Make sure you turn of the electric fence first! Then set up the field fence outside the hotwire.

All I did was get my fence post pounder and whack in some tposts on the outside of the hotwire. I had to set up a couple hog panels to "close" this yard where the goats could previously just walk thru to the next yard. I also need to set up a panel near the "gate" section. I used the same gate we had to get into the pig yard - now it just swings the other way. I added a short section of hotwire across the inside of this part and added a fence connector and there you have it.

You can see the moonscape of the old yard. They had picked it clean.

The pigs had to figure out how to get up and out of their yard and I lured them with corn soaked in goat milk. But once they were in... they were in. There is a lot for them to eat and they are pig-dozing all around the stumps.

That's some happy pork.

This weekend we'll move them along to the next field by running the rest of the field fence to the next "yard" and doing a similar field fence with hotwire on the inside set up. Once they are all the way into this next yard I'll go thru and till up their old yards and plant turnips and pumpkins to keep them happy this fall.

Technically we should have moved them a couple weeks ago but that's OK. We'll get them moved soon enough.

Happy Friday everyone! Are you moving pigz?

Lettuce Bucket

My new most favorite thing is.... the lettuce bucket. For whatever reason I could finally grow lettuce this year and it's doing GREAT! I've been having big beautiful salads almost every day.

This is a 2.5 gallon food grade bucket from the local bakery. It's the perfect size.

I'm really thrilled with being able to go up to the garden and grab a stalk of celery right from the plant, pull a green onion, clip some herbs, and then fill the rest of my lettuce bucket with lovely lettuce.

Just look how beautiful! Parsley, a green onion, a small broccoli, three kinds of lettuce, and some basil.

Why a bucket? Because it's an easy peasy way to carry my garden produce....and to wash it all at one time. The easiest way to clean greens is to fill a big pot with water, swish the greens all around, then pour off the water, rinse and repeat.... so a food grade bucket from your local donut shop or bakery is a great multi-use tool - you can carry and wash in one container. Once you rinse your greens you can than easily carry the bucket full of lightly-used water out to the garden and water your potted plants.

This is also a great way to keep just harvested greens fresh until later in the day. Cut the lettuce heads at the base with sharp kitchen shears then put cut-end down in your bucket with some water.

Then when you are ready you can make a beautiful chopped salad just like this.

Dressing? Who needs dressing on this lovely salad! Add some fresh goat cheese and it's perfect.

Happy Wednesday everyone! Do you carry your lettuce in a bucket? Give it a try - this has changed everything!

Meat Chickens. Gone.

Finally - all that is left of the meat chickens is their empty pen. They are gone!

I can't wait to clean out this pen. It stinks!

Well not entirely gone - they are still cooling in the downstairs fridge. But thank heaven we finally got this done.

Our new schedule has made it hard to keep up with some of the "two person" farm chores so we were really overdue to butcher this group of meat chickens. Fortunately they weren't much trouble and they were laying eggs. Mostly they just happily meat-ed around and kept to themselves.

They were enormous. Like. Hugely fat. Filled with fat. Fat, fat, fatty-fat-fat. Which I've rendered down.

Our next project is to fire up the incubator and see if we can get any free meat to hatch from the eggs.

A couple questions have come up about this late-meat-project so I thought I'd answer them here.

Q:  Don't you have to butcher meat chickens at 9 weeks?
A:  Friend, the only thing you have to do in life is grow old and die. You can butcher your meat chickens whenever you want. Personally, we don't buy the "grow 'em out fast" route. We let them take their time for no other reason than the high protien feed is ridiculously expensive. We grow our meats out on corn and milk. Sure we get more fat but that's kinda how we like it.

Q: But aren't old meat chickens tough and gross?
A: We've never had a meat chicken that was not tasty and delicious. The only time we've had "slightly tough" meat was when we did not let the meat rest  a couple days in the fridge. As for gross.. meat chickens in general are gross. The longer you wait the more likely they are to have that "great muscle disease" and yes... that is very gross.

Q: How do you get eggs from meat chickens?
A: Just like regular chickens. The only reason that most folks don't see this is because they butcher the creepy meats so young.

Q: But I thought meat chickens couldn't breed?
A: I tell you the truth, there is nothing so horrible to watch as a a meat roo trying to get funky with one of the fatty ladies. It just doesn't work out. While the meat roos don't lack enthusiasm, with their oversized breasts and bad physical coordination, they just well... just no. So we bring in the big guns. Yep. We have a posse of regular big roos who like what the meat girls have to offer. I am too immature to go on any further about this. I'll let you know, tho, if any of the eggs work.

Q: I thought you didn't like to butcher in summer?
A: We don't! Ugh! It's horrible! Hot, sweaty, and stanky. Plus our garbage guy hates us. Seriously I ran out there and apologized to him after a recent butcher experience. We just chose the coolest day possible and got out there early. I'd love it if we had a walk in cold room for non-winter butchering. I know a guy who is working on this and am waiting to see how it turns out.

So smell ya later, meat chickens, thanks for the eggs. And now I'm going to run right out and get that pen shoveled out. I have a lot of hay to take up and it's going right in this spot.

Happy Tuesday everyone! Do you have fatty meat chickens left? Did you butcher last weekend?

Mud Boggin' with the Pigz

I don't like mud. I don't like pigz. You can imagine how happy I was to come home from a terrific time in town to find this.....

 Pig waterer. In mud. No one was happy about this.

Yep. That's their waterer. In the wallow. It is extremely hot out there so someone had to go and get it. I looked around. Yep. No one here but me.

Dang.

Thanks Nibs.

Luckily the goats came along to provide moral support - or laugh if I ended up in the mud.

I entered the lion's den, dogless, with only a hoe to use for my defense and as a retrieval tool. The pigz still think I'm their momma and that I love them. No. Just. No. I tried to distract them with frozen hard boiled eggs but that only worked for so long.

Pigz love mud. And water from the hose.

Once their waterer was free and filled they rejoiced by ignoring it completely. The wallow is more of a swimmin' hole then a mud pit. But they are happy just the same. Happy as pigz in mud.

 They immediately ignored the waterer I worked so hard to free and went back to mud boggin'.

Happy Monday everyone! Did you go mud boggin' with your pigz?